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Fun characters, average art, great puns.

A cute, short story. Cancelled early due to short readership, but as a gag manga it has no real trouble wrapping up the story into a neat little bow. On the strength of the story and art alone I'd have to rate this manga as a 7, but the high quality of the translation brings this up to a solid 8.

But no, seriously. Kaisermutt/Horse Deer Scans performs another exceptional work of translating not just the literal meaning of the text, but transposing cultural context and even adding additional jokes and characterization. Their end-chapter translation notes are also, as always, a ... pleasure to read-- explaining what went into any given translation decision, including the resolution of cross-linguistic ambiguities and notes about the source culture. It's very obviously a labor of love, that turns a decent, but otherwise forgettable manga into something truly special.

Most anime about the future shoehorn in some sort of "technology can have drawbacks" or "we need to be careful not to lose our humanity" subplots. BNA goes very much in the opposite direction. Can't say too much because that would be spoiling the plot, but BNA is of the opinion that genetic modification is awesome, people should have whatever bodies they want, and being something other than human would be pretty damn cool. Plus, it's animated by Studio Trigger, of *Gurren Lagann*, *Kill la Kill*, *Darling in the Franxx*, and *Little Witch Academia* fame, so there's tons of awesome action shots. (The plot and ... characters are pretty good too, but frankly that was secondary to my enjoyment.)

If you enjoy transhumanist themes, you will enjoy this anime. If you're a pansy ass luddite, go back to watching your zoetrope.

There's a fundamental conflict between "actual fantasy" manga and "isekai" manga. Both carry many of the same genre trappings, but the easy digestibility of isekai manga, with its inherently relatable characters (being from our world), also makes it easy for isekais to become cliche or devolve into pointless pandering.

Heterogenia Linguistica, however, synthesizes the best elements of each. With its main character, a linguist from "our" world (or at least a world substantially similar, except for the ability to travel to a world inhabited solely by nonhumans), we have our reference point to avoid getting dropped into a world that takes dense text blocks of boring ... exposition to learn about. Through the lens of learning the languages of the nonhumans he interacts with, we find out more about their culture and in turn learn more about our own by the comparison.

Meanwhile, the nonhumans aren't the cliche elves or dragons, or even the standard "funny animals" with different shapes but fundamentally human-like thought patterns. Instead, the author has made the effort to make true "starfish aliens" with thought patterns the main characters can observe and make informed guessed about, but are still fundamentally different from our own in interesting and novel ways.

As a near sci-fi story about exploration and discovery, this story scratches an itch that very, very few works of art in any medium do, and with excellent art and likeable (albeit not super deep) characters. If the idea of comparative linguistics bores you, you won't enjoy this story. But if, like me, you're part of the niche-within-a-niche that gets sexually aroused at the idea of making first contact with aliens and exchanging cultural information, Heterogenia Linguistica will be an expert at hitting your G-spot.

Compared to its parent manga, Illegals has a much tighter focus.

The core cast is composed of a mere three members, as opposed to BnHA's massive cast herd. This is great for character development, with the main character and his teammates each getting significant character moments nearly every single chapter.

And even non-main-characters have it good-- The author doesn't treat them like setpieces to be moved around at his bidding, but respects their agency as individuals in a universe he's merely narrating.

Just like in BnHA, every superpower is unique and interesting, as are character designs.

Illegals' characters are perhaps the best part of the manga, and I rate ... them 9/10.

The monthly release schedule of Illegals lends itself to more episode chapters, with individually more compelling stories than any single BnHA chapter. Every month I'm excited to read the chapters because I know I'll get a self-contained experience that weekly manga can't quite match.

On the other hand, the monthly schedule detracts from Illegal's ability to significantly progress its story-wide arc, but luckily that's partially mitigated by how Illegals ties into BnHA, allowing information to be released in parallel.

I would rate Illegal's story as slightly worse than BnHA's story, but still very good on an objective level. 8/10.

I'll admit straight out that I'm not a good art critic-- I can say that the art looks good and that I personally enjoy it, but beyond that, not much.

If you liked the art in BnHA, the art here is basically identical. As a result of the smaller scale of Illegals (and presumably the smaller scale of its finances), it does lack a little of BnHA's "wow" factor. 7/10

Overall, I'm really enjoying Illegals, both as a sidestory to BnHA and on its own merits. In fact, I'd go so far as so say I enjoy it more than BnHA.

If you're a fan of street-level superhero stories, read it. If you're a fan of BnHA, read it. If you're willing to accept Pop*Step as your lord and savior, READ IT.

9/10 enjoyment, 9/10 overall.

edit: as of chapter 28, I've raised this to a 10/10. No spoilers as to why, it's just that good.